


how dark have you been, sunshine?

by mythbusterposey



Series: Drunken Reylo [8]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Angst, Inspired by All Summer In A Day, Like I guess this is kylux, M/M, Murder, Revenge, childhood revenge-getting, drunk writing again wheeeee, kids being dicks, split personality themes, the smoke monster from lost i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-10
Updated: 2016-04-10
Packaged: 2018-06-01 07:55:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6509500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mythbusterposey/pseuds/mythbusterposey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Elan was a child that died when he'd been left in the dark. Hux was the one that emerged, and sought nothing but retribution.</p><p>Or, to kill fear, you must first kill yourself.</p><p>Inspired by the Ray Bradbury short story, All Summer In A Day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	how dark have you been, sunshine?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [machinewithoutfeelings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/machinewithoutfeelings/gifts).



> For those of you that have not read All Summer In A Day, it's the story of a girl Margot, who had moved to Venus from Earth, getting bullied by the children in her class for talking about the sun, since the sun only came out once every seven years for two hours. She'd been locked in a closet for the entirety of the sunlight hours, forgotten by her cruel classmates while they enjoyed the sunshine. Growing up, I'd read this short story two or three times, and in my senior year, after reading Fahrenheit 451, I fell upon it again. The feeling I'd gotten about it was so visceral and desperate for revenge in Margot's name. I'm happy to dedicate this to anybody who has ever felt cast out of a group of peers for being different. Thank you.

The warmth of the sun was something unlike anything Elan could describe. It went against the stiff, structured words his father held, and flourished in his mind like a flower would, if it survived the endless abuse of the rain on Arkanis. The sun burned him, always, in the hours he was allowed to go and experience it. The children, of course, were instructed to spend at least 7 hours in the sun lamp rooms within the trooper base on Arkanis. Elan wondered if there was any world that had sunlight as much as he had rain, had suffocating dryness and heat instead of swelling dampness and chill as he’d had.

He had pushed the memory into his mind as far as he could have, the one about being on Arkanis when he was 9 years old. He was to enter the Academy just a year later, but at that time he was still his mother’s round-faced sensitive son, excelling in maths and science and all other subjects in such a manner that worried said mother. He was to be a great strategist one day, no doubt the pride of the First Order. A resurgent figure of the Empire, showing as little ruthlessness as a young adult as he would into his mid-thirties. But for now, he was just a child.

At nine, he was shorter and skinnier than the rest of the boys at the day school he’d been enrolled in. He didn’t care for conversation or antics with his fellow classmates, instead preferring to speak with his instructors and supervisors, going through exercises and lessons with an invigorated fervor. He knew every word his teachers spoke, and was polite enough to hold his tongue when they spoke of sunlight. He knew he’d get his chance.

When an assignment turned up for a short poem about what they thought the sun was like, Elan was at a loss; he stared at his blank paper with nothing but blurred memories from the last time his father had taken him on a cruise by a local star. He remembers staying by the transparisteel viewports until his pale skin burned red, stained by freckles he came to loathe. The rich tans of the wives that remained on the spa deck frightened him. To be as forever-changed by the sun as they were was terrifying. Elan didn’t like the permanence of anything such as that. To be changed by something so powerful as a sun was daunting.

He wanted to conquer it.

But at that moment, at ten, he craved that all-encompassing warmth, that would drag him away from his fears and take him somewhere safer, hotter than he could ever imagine. Yes, he dreamed of it, and yes he longed for that burn once more. Maybe it was a sign of him growing older that he desired pain rather than resented it.

But as he lifted his eyes from his datapad after reading his sun poem aloud, he was met with nothing but the resentful glares of his classmates. They loathed him for his father’s privilege, were likely beaten as a result of their own fathers’ lower ranks. Elan knew there was nothing in for him but more pain. But at this point, he feared that terribly so.

Too small and too weak to stop them, he was tossed into a supply corridor like an unwanted broom, unable to fulfill a purpose other than to exist when needed. Elan was not a tenth the man his father was at that moment, so he was utterly useless.

Sitting in the dark, that day, was torture. No blade and no chemical could compare to not being able to experience the sun on that occasion. It was Arkanis’ Sun Day. The clouds were predicted to part for a full twenty-four hours, and leave the inhabitants of Arkanis a momentous occasion to revel in the sunlight. The weather would be decidedly and historically grim in the time following, usually a hurricane or blizzard following their brief summer. But Elan was situated at the corner of that closet, tears staining his faded freckled cheeks, making his normally warm gray eyes go icy blue, and violently red around the edges. Vengeance burned in his heart. He had started making a plan.

He would not tell his father of this day. He would slap his cheeks enough to put on a show of sun-burn to his family, but he’d get past it in time. He would keep that anger close to his heart. Like a drum, it beat so rhythmically in his veins. He could march to his own wrath. It was like a terrifying musical to his own ears.

But like the great strategist he was predicted to be, he kept a notebook close to heart, filled with the fifteen names of the children that had pushed and grasped his arms, that had laughed in his face at his own childish terror. He kept a sheet of just their names, and next to each, a number, from least offensive to most.

As he rose through the ranks, he came in contact with them over and over again. They hardly recognized the man before them. The only thing similar to the child that had emerged from the locked closet was those icy blue eyes, boring into them as they screamed for mercy, for death. And oh, death would come, in time. But not after Hux sought his revenge.

One by one, they died. Mysterious circumstances, they said. One in a battle, hard-fought and surprisingly lost. One in flight, a rogue trooper setting off a bomb (that Hux had programmed from afar) that brought down an entire envoy to a planet. As the list dwindled from fifteen to ten to five, he knew he’d have to be sneakier, more covert.

He visited those deaths himself. The ones that had dared touch his body were to be paid a personal visit. The four leading to the end didn’t leave much to incriminate him. But Hux knew that the last one could land him in the executioners’ chair.

Jorm Frahe was the last one left. In school, he had a large nose and even larger ears and wide eyes the teachers would fall for every time. All the girls doted on him and all the mothers of the children at the day school adored him. Officially, none of the pre-Academy instructors could interact with the day school students, but more than once, Jorm was invited over to the Colonel’s house “at the behest of his wife” and had dined with them. The boy was infuriatingly strong and persuasive, but Hux was smarter, which would mean Jorm’s end ultimately.

He’d waited over a year between each of the last few executions, to avoid suspicions. It just wouldn’t do to have a serial murderer of rank within the First Order. By his clearance and his own skills, Hux could delete any remaining marks and _do away_ with those that raised their voices to investigate the deaths of his other fourteen classmates. If things like the First Order’s legal system didn’t exist, he would have made a brutal example of all fifteen of them at once, but that wouldn’t have been satisfying to watch. 

His troopers and officers wouldn’t have understood. Nobody would have.

So he had invited Jorm to a party aboard the _Finalizer_ , the one part of the starship that wasn’t dry. _To Lt. Cdr. Jorm Frahe, you have been cordially invited aboard the Starship_ Finalizer _to celebrate the upcoming New Year by General Elan Hux with warmest wishes._

Hux felt a sick sort of chill fall over him as he’d written those last words after his own name. He knew that a summons by somebody of his own rank would be unavoidable to somebody of Jorm’s. He would be there by fear of anything; surely Jorm had heard of the deaths of the other fourteen, and knew he was next.

It was predicted the man would arrive with a certain amount of pride, but the rank on his sleeves and the insulting lack of ribbons upon his chest only played into Hux’ plan. Jorm’s insecurities were always, psychologically, a part of the plan. Hux intended the man to suffer. As he’d observed the Lieutenant Commander’s military record, he observed there was a distinct lack of combat experience, most likely spurred after his old classmates had started mysteriously dying. Of course Hux was the kind of man to sacrifice many of his own to murder the few, or the one. Jorm Frahe knew nothing of suffering.

Hux had to lay in the blinding, burning light of an artificial sun lamp for hours longer than the others, hiding the tears that wanted to fall from his spiteful glare. _‘He’s too pale,’_ his mother had mentioned. _‘It’s like he didn’t play in the sun at all…’_

Instead he used those long moments in the sharp, unnatural heat to forge his own future plans. They would be solid as steel, and twice as strong. Steel had no plans or schedules to uphold to. Hux would fulfill his destiny before the time he was thirty-three. That’s where the plans lay.

At thirty-two, Hux had sent the message to Frahe. He’d received notification of the man’s RSVP three weeks before his birth-day. The event was to fall upon his thirty-third birthday.

The night before the event was to take place, he had a strange dream.

He was sitting at a table in a brightly-lit room. It didn’t bother his eyes as it normally would have; instead it did well to illuminate the full glass of what looked like wine in his hand. He’d been making quite the impressive speech to his guest, a man cloaked in darkness other than his robes, who was rather disinterested at what he’d had to say. However, once he lifted the glass to his mouth and drank deeply, almost the entire glass, the guest had looked up. He could feel the surprise and respect and _lust_ dripping off of the other man as he’d set the glass down. Only then did he realize that he was drinking the blood of Jorm Frahe.

He’d jolted out of his rest mere moments before the alarm should have. Swinging his long legs out of bed, he walked over to the console in his quarters, to check on some messages. Other than a few brief watch-log updates from the bridge and from the rest of his crew supervisors, he had nothing new. Until he scrolled up to a message that had been sent by Supreme Leader Snoke.

 _You will be quartering Knight Kylo Ren aboard the_ Finalizer _for the foreseeable future. Allow him access to every resource above your ship, with no questions asked. I expect full compliance from all members._

The thin threat annoyed him more than the actual ‘request’. Ren, he’d said. A Knight of Ren was to be aboard his ship. He quickly sent a message to the commanding officer of the _Vengeance_.

_Mommart,_

_I am soon to receive a Knight of Ren aboard the_ Finalizer _. I understand that you had Mugal Ren aboard for the last 7 months. Please advise._

_Hux_

The messages between commanding officers were never more than blunt; there was always something better to be done than speak to those of the same rank. Only briefly did Hux think about how awful having some spiritual crusader on board would be, before his mind switched into getting himself ready for the day.

Once he’d showered, shaved, and gotten into uniform, did he call for a meal droid to bring him a meal to his quarters. The Empire and the First Order had no official documentation on the Knights of Ren, but there were some pieces of information that he could look in on, to brief himself as much as possible, given the circumstances.

After learning as much as he could have about the mystical order (and whatever footnotes they had about Kylo Ren, apparently their leader) he set out for the bridge, to observe order and efficiency as they anchored in orbit around Magis V. 

Magis V boasted a horribly dramatic tourism history. _The most deaths in the galaxy!_ the pamphlets cried on every docking station. Hux begged to differ. No one in the galaxy had such dirty hands as him, yet he had never touched a single victim of his. _Until tonight,_ he delighted in thinking.

All thoughts forgotten about Kylo Ren and their mystical order, he prepared for his party as much as possible. His crew knew nothing about said gathering, only that it was to be kept under the highest clearance, and all that spoke of it would be sentenced to death on sight by anybody else in attendance.

Accordingly, most intelligent officers invited knew they were to attend an execution. 

However, Jorm Frahe did not.

Hux was sent a notification when the officer boarded the _Finalizer_ , as he was normally when anybody of an official rank did from another ship. (It had been a disaster when the _Continuum_ had boarded in the midst of an evacuation from said ship to the _Finalizer_ , however, a major reactor leak was not to be taken lightly by any standpoint. They only had so many troopers.)

A sea of dress whites appeared in General Hux’ midst as he walked into the room. The officer closest to him called attention on deck, and the room went instantly silent and still. Hux surveyed the men around them, none of them at liberty to meet his eyes. He could smell the stench of fear within the room, something he despised. He thought he just smelled rank as a child, but he knows better now than that. He’d been fearful of everything. He never stooped so much as to hate himself for it, but there was a distinct difference in who he was as a person. Fear had been an integral part of him as a child, and was now distinctly gone from him as an adult.

“Carry on.” General Hux announced, and within a minute, the room was back to its previous chatter and noise level, though significantly less at ease. The officers of the _Finalizer_ did not tend to speak to the outsider in the room. For once, the outsider wasn’t Hux.

If Hux were the type to read minds, he would only hear the vaguely pitiful passing thoughts of his crew, for a certain Lieutenant Commander in the room. 

After the rabble had resumed, Hux made his way to the refreshment table, grateful to have at least a few drinks before trying his hand at homicide. He’d worn gloves. Futile, really. This wasn’t something you could take off your conscience at the end of the day.

Really, Hux wanted to wrap it around his conscience like a blanket and sleep a thousand years. 

Or wrap it around his conscience’s neck and _pull._

The music provided was rather dim. He felt a bit mad with the feeling that he’d be committing a crime soon. But this was wartime and he knew he was the best. He knew a few deaths of nonconformists were necessary, regardless of their bright wide eyes or large noses or large ears.

Finally he saw the man he’d been plotting to kill for over twenty-three years.

Now a bit haggard (and overcompensating in the gym, apparently), Jorm Frahe stood among a group of three officers who looked like they desperately wanted to be away from him. He was a disease. Whatever he had or was, was punishable by death. And not some subversive death as Hux was rumored to be known for. Punishable by death from Hux’ personal involvement.

Approaching him was almost surreal, watching those once-sumg, once-over-confident eyes grow even wider in fear as Hux drew closer. A predatory animal to a prey too incompetent to do anything but stand still. His crew moved from the scene respectfully, giving their commander the breadth he’d need for this. Would there be blood? Would there be fire? Would there be the stench of burnt flesh that many of the combat officers knew too well the scent of?

Hux had thought long about the way which he would extinguish this man’s life. He was ruthless and biting and intelligent, and intended to let this man suffer as much as possible.

“Lieutenant Commander,” he began pleasantly. The rest of the room had dropped into such a deep silence it was nearly palpable. “It is so wonderful for you to make it to my little New Year’s party. The others couldn’t make it.” There was no mistaking that Hux was referring to the fourteen. All the same, Frahe attempted to safe his own skin.

“The others, sir?” His voice was raised slightly, like he was performing for the sake of the others around him. The collar of his uniform was darkened with sweat.

“Oh, the fourteen others I’d invited from our graduating class. I’m sure you knew some of them…” Hux proceeded to watch the man’s fear lapse into absolute terror as he named off the fourteen former classmates he’d arranged the deaths of. “Them.” he finished. He knew his officers wouldn’t dare look into those accounts, and Hux had already scrubbed those records clean of his involvement, anyway.

“Ah, yes, sir. I think I remember.”

“Come now, Jorm, don’t tell me you forgot.” His admonishment sent chills down the spines of everybody in the room. “It was such a dark part of our history together. We never really forget the time spent in the dark, do we, now.” Hux’ frozen blue eyes did not waver from the other man’s shifting ones.

“I suppose you’re right, sir.” The man sputters out. His hand shakes on his drink. “My apologies, sir.” The way he says it is in part, a plea for mercy. Of course, Hux knows nothing of the sort. He hasn’t known mercy since he was denied it as a child.

“No need for formalities, now, Jorm.” Hux’ voice is almost hushed, pleasant. Soothing a lamb before the slaughter. “It’s the end of it all, anyway.” Those around to hear it gave a small gasp at his attitude. “The end of a cycle, anyway.” A smirk crossed his lips for a second, and it looked like Jorm was going to pass out. “May I show you something rather amazing?” He asks, sounding perfectly _normal_ for the first time since entering the room.

“Of course, sir. I’m at your mercy, sir.”

The rushed words make Hux (and a few just-as-mad officers) laugh aloud. The _Finalizer_ has never felt colder. Spite and terror are the scents in the air, just as thick and twice as disgusting as fear. Hux turns and his crew pushed Frahe after him. He would not scuff his feet to his own execution. It was not the way of the First Order to show regret for a crime punishable by death. Pride was quite the rage, really. It kept lots of people in line.

“Stand there.” Hux instructed, his voice dropping into something bordering on insane. He pointed to a spot on the floor, the insignia of the Order emblazoned on the gleaming black durasteel. It looked seamless against the rest of the tiles making up the hall’s floor, but every person in the room knew it was as sinister as the look on their commander’s face. “What’s the darkest place you’ve ever been, Jorm?” His voice dripped with condescension, eyes lacking mirth, lips turned up in a sneer. His face was pale, the reckoning visage of a ghost who’s been haunting longer than they’d been alive.

“I was in a sensory tank, once.” The man said. Stars, it looked like the man was about to piss himself. “Three hours.”

“This won’t take long, promise.” Hux wasn’t speaking to Frahe, more the rest of the room. If there was any relief to be taken from the words, it didn’t reach the room’s occupants. Hux held up a comm unit to his mouth, and spoke, “Fourteen-zero-two, Elan Herald Hux.”

Quick as a flash, a thick glass-like cylinder rose up around Frahe. The man struck his fists against the glass, barely able to move in his cage. His shouts disappeared as soon as the tube connected with the overhead above them. The sound of the room re-pressurizing only remained. There was no sound within. Hux lowered the comm device.

“If any of you have children, you will instruct them to be fair, and equal to one another, lest this fate befall them in the future. My father commanded the academy for many years. I command the armies of the First Order, so it is my duty to watch the progress of the academies and training schools, all of them, down to the day schools. Some of the cruelest people I’ve known have been children, specifically this one.” His eyes flicked back to Frahe, who was pressed against the glass, attempting to claw his way out desperately. “You will lead by example. If you do not have the means you will lead with example. This is example.” He turned from his gathered crowd back to Frahe. He raised the comm. “Commence chamber flood.” He murmured.

A satisfied shudder raced down Hux’ spine for a moment, that spiteful part of him borne immediately in the wake of his child self’s death grinning in delight. He could move past this all with revenge. No one was close enough to him to know about this, so no one told him this was wrong. They wouldn’t have been able to stop him anyway.

The transparent material holding Frahe in place shimmered once before solidifying once more. From above, a deep darkness fell closer and closer to Frahe. Seconds, minutes passed.

Really, the people in the room shouldn’t have been able to see this. But Hux had thought long and hard about this. He’d build the _Finalizer_ around this room, ever since he’d gotten the idea at thirteen.

He would kill Jorm Frahe with the dark.

As the thick darkness grew in the tube, Frahe began to scream, thrashing his head about, blinded by whatever it was coming into the tube with him. Hux and the officers watched him with stony glares as the darkness reached his face, and tugged him upwards, his neck stretching longer than it ever physically should. 

More than stretching, more than anything the regular mind could imagine, Frahe was ripped apart by the darkness. His skin lost all color, his hair lost all pigment, his face contorted into a horrifying twist of unrecognizable features. His legs were torn from his body, his hands fused to his neck and his arms separated from his shoulders. Somehow he bent double, his head snapping back between his shoulders, of which the bones now protruded from his grotesque body. The face smeared black blood along the glass, large nose breaking into five seperate directions. His ears now drooped to his elbows, holding up his reversed arms.

It was black matter. Hux had discovered it in his early years as a recon-sniper for the Order. He’d seen men twist and _change_ into gargoyles, monsters, horrible and nightmarish. They sunk into ponds of it, unrecognizable as they were spat out. He’d spent years figuring out how to weild it. Because that was Hux’ way: find something terrifying and unnatural, and manipulate it into something he could use for his own pleasure. At first it had been violence, then had been weapons, then had been death. Now, the dark was at his beck and call. He’d nearly died in the times he’d tried to test it in this room, but it was worth it to see his test subjects so malformed and disgusting.

Now that scent of fear had returned, this time from the junior officers of the room. At last, Frahe had stopped jerking and fighting death. Hux closed his eyes for a moment, mourning the child of him who had loved the stars and feared the dark too much. It seemed grossly inappropriate to do so in the company of his peers, but this had to be seen. He had to know his crew could come to him with such acts of revenge in their own hearts. He had to know their loyalty was to him, whether through respect or compassion or fear, he didn’t care.

Eventually, he opened his eyes and brought the comm up. “Drain tunnel, send a clean-up droid set to the grand hall. Over and out.”

“Aye, sir.” The comm fizzed out and the tube drained quickly as the darkness was sucked back into the ceiling. Most of the room watched it go, in wonder of its abilities, in awe of its apparent sentience, though hunger quenched. The rest were torn between watching Hux and watching as Frahe was rather unceremoniously dropped to the floor. The tube slid back into the ground, and everyone held their breath, like they were next, or like the room was about to be gassed next.

Frahe could have been something parents told their children about. Hux liked that. He liked the thought of being the monster that created monsters out of others for being cruel.

The sun was setting on Magis V, and it threw a bloodred wash over the room. It looked as though Hux had a glass of blood in his hand, and he’d bathed in it as well.

“Enjoy the rest of the party. You’re all on liberty for the rest of the day cycle.” Hux lifted his almost-forgotten drink and downed it all in one, smashing the crystal on the floor by Frahe’s head once finished. The sharp, loud sound made everyone jump but Hux, who was already out the door by that moment.

He passed the clean-up droids on his way back to his quarters. He flicked on his comm once more and was interrupted by a notification intent on telling him that Kylo Ren was five minutes from boarding the _Finalizer._

Might as well make a good first impression.

Hux made his way to the docking level the Knight would be signaled into. He was coming in on an Upsilon-class shuttle, a rather infamous one, if Hux remembered correctly. He was rather not in his right mind, at the moment. The more sensible part of him was screeching that he’d rise to meet a probable Force user so soon after commiting murder. The power-hungry part of him was moaning for it.

When the large black ship anchored in with the tractor beams, it filled the wide mouth of the hangar so much it looked more like a void, an endless maw that could swallow you up just looking at it. A minute passed between it settling on the non-skid durasteel hangar floor and the loading door falling open. Steam and a vague breeze of depressurization swept over Hux in all of his dress finery.

After the squadron of stormtroopers filed out and formed up properly did the Knight descend.

 _How dramatic_ , was the first thought that came to mind when the thick black cloaks first started swishing down the walkway. Heavy black boots connected to legs as long as Hux’ connected to a built body as Frahe’s had been, though Hux did not laugh at the thick arms that moved gracelessly at its side. Those leather-gloved fists could smash a skull, he was sure. The mask was rather deserving of a scoff. He did not need a breathing apparatus as the late Lord Vader had, yet the modulator on it gave the impression. This man was strong and youthful, as apparent in his walk and body language. He walked with a sort of guarded intensity, like he was trained for many years to hold himself back. Hux knew that walk. It was the way he walked.

The most breathtaking thing about him was the thick darkness, as dangerous and all-consuming as the black matter thriving in the veins of the _Finalizer_. Tendrils of power exuded from the Knight, touching the various welcome wagon members. Finally they wrapped around Hux.

Heat, incredible heat he’d thought he’d forgotten, slithered under his skin and stayed there, stroking across his open and vulnerable mind, pulling the pleasure of watching his childhood torment die at his hands, pulling the child in the closet, pulling his name, his mad dreams of a solar weapon more powerful than both Death Stars, and the very scraps of his soul. He felt strummed as a string, though not as vaguely discomfited as his fellow officers. Kylo Ren stopped before him. 

“General Hux.” the modulator rasped. The voice, deep and sharp through the relay, made the troopers shift in fear.

“Lord Ren.” Hux smirked softly, not so much sizing the man up as he was appreciating the man’s power, and how little impact he had on Hux’ own. “Welcome aboard the _Finalizer_.”

_We have the most deaths in the galaxy._


End file.
